


this labor, by slow prudence to make mild

by Vernal



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Abuse, F/M, Just two people being very slow and figuring things out, Novel ways of dealing with both, Trauma, not smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 02:30:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14463060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vernal/pseuds/Vernal
Summary: It's been a long time since Shepard has been alone in a room with anyone she isn't fighting.





	this labor, by slow prudence to make mild

She locked the cabin door behind her.

Rather than ask EDI aloud, she keyed a full comm lockout into the desk terminal. Garrus stood behind her taking the measure of the room, as he always did.

I think your fish are multiplying, he said.

She looked up. He was standing by the tank, and against the lights his fringe cut a sharp silhouette. He watched the fish for a few more moments, and when he turned he found her looking back at him.

What? he said. A rumble of humor in his subvocals, a slight rasp.

She watched his eyes as he blinked. The lids closing and opening, the irises—blue as his armor—alone in the black, his left eye obscured by his visor.

Take that off, she said, and brushed a finger across the left side of her face, to show him what.

He put a finger up to touch some hidden switch and the holo shut off so sharply it was as if it had never been there at all. He unhooked it from where it was fitted against the back of his head and walked over to her, and she tensed.

He slowed, mandibles flaring. I can go if you want me to, he said.

It's just—habit.

What made it a habit?

She shook her head sharply, once. I haven’t told you about how I grew up, she said.

He set down the visor on the desk and settled into a crouch in front of her. Want to talk about it?

No.

Well. If you ever do, let me know.

Do you have a gun on you?

My pistol, yeah. Just a backup.

Put it on the desk.

He reached back for it too quickly and she tensed and rose up slightly out of her chair, hand straying to where her pistol would mount on her armor. He paused with his arm locked behind him.

Sorry, he said. Too fast?

Yeah.

He moved more slowly this time as he pulled the pistol free, and then he stood. She thought she heard the safety come off but forced herself not to move. When he set it on the desk she waited until he stood back and then took it for herself.

Knives? she said.

A boot knife. Nothing fancy, but it's sharp. That too?

She nodded and switched the safety off the pistol. Slow, she said.

He reached down into his boot without looking at her at all and withdrew the knife and its sheath together and set them on the desk where the pistol had been. She slid them back to the terminal, out of reach.

Anything else? she said.

Oh, you know. Just the Thanix cannon hidden under my chestplate.

She waited a beat, and one of his mandibles twitched sideways. Sorry, he said again. Bad joke. No, nothing else.

She was holding the gun loosely pointed in his direction and her finger was flat along the triggerguard. He looked at it and then at her. It was one of the few times she had seen him without his visor, and she studied the smooth curve of his cheekbone, the arch of the blue clanmarks painted there, and then the other side, the burn scars that covered chin, mouthplates, mandible. All the while he stood quietly and looked back at her and when she met his eyes she looked away. I'm sorry, she said. I'm not trying to threaten you.

I trust you.

She rose from where she was sitting, holding the pistol steady. I’m going to go to the bed, she said, but you go first.

He turned unhurriedly and went down the stairs. She followed behind him even more slowly, the gun wavering, held nearly sideways, her wrist limp. He sat on the bed and crossed one leg over the other at the ankle and she sat in the chair facing him and settled, pistol pointing to the floor. Can you take off your boots? she said.

He took them off as slowly as he had taken out the knife, one at a time. There was some kind of close-fitted garment underneath each, either fabric or rubber, and he slid hem off and folded it on top of the boots.

And the rest of your leg plates, she said.

He turned to look at her and still despite the gun and the strangeness of the request and all the circumstances together he looked as untroubled as if he had been about to take off his armor anyway. He took the armor off each leg and stacked the plates together and set them aside, and underneath there was a similar dark fabric to what he had worn over his feet. When he was done he toed the armor further away from the bed and sat watching her again.

Chestplate, she said, in barely a whisper.

And when he took it off he seemed so much smaller, the dark mesh underneath clinging to the curve of every plate, the back of his armor falling onto the rumpled sheets and the front coming off in his hands before he set it on the floor. One of his mandibles twitched sideways.

I always think I look ridiculous when I only have part of my armor on, he said.

She only watched him. He took off his arm plates before she said anything and then started to peel off the undergarment, chest first, snagging it awkwardly on some of the larger protrusions of his chest, the smaller ones on his arms. When he had finished he folded it as neatly as he had done the rest and set it on top of his chestplate on the floor.

There was a deep natural cleft in his breastplate that she had never known existed, down past what would have been his sternum, and blue markings traced it in broad lines, hooking outward toward his shoulders. And then the plates gave way to redbrown skin with the toughness and tautness of hide, along his sides, under his arms, around his neck, and still he seemed so thin, no apparent muscle but what showed as tension under his skin, the joints strangely thick. She looked up to the cowl of plating or bone around his neck, deeply notched on the left where some piece of shrapnel from the rocket had gone under his armor.

Does that hurt? she said, and touched her own shoulder, to show him where.

Hmm? he said, and looked over. Oh, no. Throbs a bit sometimes, but it doesn't hurt. Hasn't for a long time, Turians have all sorts of odd things in their plate structure. A notch here or there is normal.

But that was from the rocket.

Yeah. Got pretty deep. Chakwas got most of the shrapnel, but some of it is still in there somewhere. Cut open a couple things that really should stay whole if you want to live very long.

She smiled at that, very slightly, and he tilted his head to the side.

You know, he said, turians don't really do the whole kissing thing, but I can't help but be curious.

You don't even have lips.

Well. No. But we do have tongues, which, if certain conversations with Joker are to be believed, can also be useful for that sort of thing.

I’ve never been that good at it.

I don’t mind.

He started to rise and she snapped the pistol up into a firm grip and the sights aligned on his eye. He stopped moving and sat slowly back on the bed again, holding her gaze. After a moment she lowered the pistol again, down to the arm of the chair. I trust you more than I've ever trusted anyone, she said. More than Hackett, or Anderson, or EDI.

But?

But I need this, she said, and tapped the gun. Because I don't trust anyone all the way.

What would I do that would make you shoot me?

Force me. Or try to make me do anything that I don't want to.

Or move too fast.

That too.

He leaned slightly back, one arm off to his side. Well, he said. I can just lie here. I can still leave, too, if you want me to.

I don't want you to.

They had not stopped looking at each other, and Garrus’s eyes were steady and unreadable.

Why do you want me here? he said.

Because I trust you.

That's not an answer.

Because I don't want to let what's in my head stop me, and I want to kiss you even if I have to do it with a gun to your head.

She spoke in a rush and stopped afterward, let the silence gather in again. Garrus had not stopped watching her.

I'm going to move back on the bed, he said.

She nodded in a small way and he moved his leg very slowly up to the bed and pushed, and slid back toward the headboard until he was resting on one of the pillows.

I'm going to grab the other pillow too, he said, and then he did, making a softer resting place. He lay with his knees turned away from each other, spurs in, and put his arms on his chest, closed his eyes.

He lay still afterward and she sat for a while watching him breathe. His lungs were higher in his chest than a human's she watched his skin flex, the plates part and settle. There was a subtle thread of tension in his shoulders but he looked otherwise relaxed. She rose from the chair with the gun and walked toward the bed and when he opened his eyes she stopped.

Close your eyes, she said.

If I twitch or something, will you promise not to shoot me?

She didn't answer and he closed his eyes again and moved one hand to the base of the cleft in his breastplate, two fingers touching where it ended. That's my heart, there, he said. You can make it quick.

And he settled back again. Breathing slowly, his head resting on the pillows, chin down toward his chest.

She moved toward the side of the bed and put her knee up onto it and his arm twitched, then stilled. When she moved again she switched the gun over to her left hand and rested it against his chest and then leaned down over his face and kissed him.

He made a deep noise that rumbled from his throat down into his chest and tilted his head up only to have his crest jab back into the pillow. She closed her eyes. He smelled like the embers of a forest fire and his breath had a kind of heat that almost made her recoil, like steam from an exhaust pipe or the backblast of a rocket. But she pressed her lips to the plates and they parted, and his own tongue darted out for a moment before he pulled it back. She could feel the burn scarring even without looking, the odd boiled-leather texture of the plates, the sharpness of their edges. His mandibles flared and tightened and she raised herself back up.

He opened his eyes. Even in the lower light she could see the color in them and he seemed strangely at peace, patient and watching her with a respect mixed with muted awe. But he did not speak even as the moment stretched and neither did she.

Eventually she pulled her hand away. Lights, she said, and darkness fell.

The fishtank lights stayed on. She could still see the color and focus in one of his eyes, the tightness of the skin in the socket. The other lay in shadow. He blinked once, still not moving.

I was going to make another bad joke, he said. But now I can't remember what it was.

That's okay.

Do you want me to move over?

Yeah.

He moved sideways on the bed until he was nearly at the edge and she reached to set the gun on the nightstand and lay down beside him. He raised his head to look at her, and he blinked. Can I touch your face? he said.

She curled her left hand into a fist but nodded, and he reached out—slow, careful—and put the largest of his three fingers against her cheek.

She was taut as a tripwire but she forced herself not to move. He traced his fingers around the orbit of her eye, across her forehead, down her other cheek with the side and then the tip of a talon. His eyes on her face all the while, considering.

Soft, he said quietly, and there was a small hitch as he said it, something close to a trill in the back of his throat that resonated in hers. I don't know how you humans survive, if you're all this soft.

Don't let it fool you, she said.

Ha. It doesn't. Knowing you, seeing you in action, I don't think even turians can take the amount of punishment humans can.

He took his hand away and she felt herself lean in toward its absence. Can I touch your face? she said, almost without thinking about it, and he nodded.

Just—gentle on the crest, he said. It’s not fragile, or anything, but it's not particularly pleasant when they bend. And the thinner parts by my mouth, they—

She leaned forward and kissed him again, and caught in the middle of the word she could feel his tongue against her lip, the edge of one of the teeth that ran in twin rows along the side of his mouth.

When he moved his arm up to reach for her she drew back, and in the momentary closeness she was fascinated by the odd rigidity of him. She had fought turians hand to hand, but to be able to look over every ridge and plate was something else again. She ran her fingers over the strange permanent wrinkles of his forehead, the notch where his nose met his brow, down across the paint of his clanmarks and the vented nostrils and the fine groove that bisected his mouthplate. He opened his mouth and she could feel the heat of his breath. He had closed his eyes.

You keep doing that and I'm going to fall asleep, he said.

That's okay, she said, her voice quiet and slightly husky.

He nodded his head forward and adjusted his legs. She put her hand up to his face again and traced her way down the side, feeling the give of the plate, and continued around, around until she felt the hardness change to the ragged freshness of scar tissue. Then down across a mandible, which flexed slightly under her fingers, and up to the rigid bone end, down into the softer, leaner skin of his neck, a thin array of scales across the thicker muscles.

He made a quiet noise and his mandibles flexed wide, showing teeth. That might wake me back up, he said, in a rumble that was almost entirely down into subvocals, and she let her hand rest there across his neck, her head bent down to touch his.

She did not move after that and neither did he. The fishtank bubbled in the background. Above them the edges of the _Normandy_ 's blueshift field lingered against the stars.

Garrus's breathing had steadied and she looked down to watch the rise and fall of his chest and she could feel his pulse in his neck through her hand. A slower stronger beat than a human's or an asari's. She curled the hand a little further around him and pulled back to lie more firmly against the pillows. Then she fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

 For the first time in months, she did not dream.

 

* * *

 

 _Commander,_ EDI's voice said. _There is a priority ultraviolet transmission from Admiral Hackett waiting for you at your terminal._

She roused into wakefulness with a vengeful snarl and found Garrus sitting on the couch, reading at his tablet, looking contemplative. Morning, he said, with an edge of humor.

EDI, Shepard said. Please re-enable full comm lockout.

_Understood, Shepard._

Her voice withdrew. Garrus flexed his mandibles.

I rescinded the lockout when I woke up, he said. Figured we couldn't shut out the world forever.

She was tight and tense and her heart was beating as fast as it ever had and for a moment she struggled to breathe.

Garrus rose up. Are you okay? he said.

Fine.

I don't think I've ever seen you fine. Calm, maybe, but not fine.

I hate being woken by the comm.

I can relate.

He came slowly to sit on the edge of the bed and she was tired enough that she forgot to tense as he approached. How did you sleep? he said.

Well enough. Did I say anything?

Not that I heard. Did you have dreams?

No. But I usually do. You're sure I didn't say anything?

Nothing that woke me.

She settled back against the head of the bed and then slid down to rest back on the pillows.

What about you? she said.

How did I sleep? I slept alright. And I usually can't get to sleep on human beds, so count that as a compliment. But turians don't sleep as long as humans, generally speaking, so I've been awake for a while.

Reading reports?

Yeah. The latest from Palaven.

Bad news?

It could be worse, but not by much. Almost all the infrastructure that matters has been heavily damaged. Millions without water, food, anywhere to sleep. And that's on top of all the reaper minions still wandering around. But they're managing, one day at a time.

Good.

He eased further onto the bed before pausing and looking at her. Can I lie down?

Yeah.

He dropped the rest of the way, and the impact rattled one of his mandibles enough that it flapped. Shepard smiled. Smooth, Vakarian, she said.

If I was smooth, this all would have happened a lot earlier.

Really?

Her tone had changed to something curious and amused and faintly, mockingly threatening. He closed his eyes. Oh, I shouldn't have said that, he said, sounding pained.

How much earlier?

You mean how long have I...? Hmm. Since Omega. Well. Really I think it was some time before that, but I didn't really realize until I saw you on Omega. Something about going three days without sleep or a full meal. Or maybe it was all the stims.

There was a current of some emotion just barely audible in his subvocals, and she could feel it in her chest, an odd inconstant vibration.

How long have you what? she said.

He glanced toward the pillow, away from her. Up close, she could see the smallest of movements in the plates around his mouth.

I'm not very good at this, Shepard, he said.

What?

Talking about these things. I've always been better at shooting things than talking about them.

What were you going to say?

He continued to look toward the pillows, the bottom plate of his mouth hanging down.

I saw you down the scope, he said. And I passed it off as a hallucination, just kept shooting. But when you showed up behind me, up close—I tried to make it seem like I wasn't surprised, of course. You'd always done the impossible before, I didn't want to seem like I expected anything less. But, spirits, two years, after everything that happened, and you show up right as I hit my breaking point. I don't know what the odds were. I probably don't want to.

You'd have made it out. 

No, Shepard. I wouldn't have. And that's—I was talking to my dad, over the comm. There was a short stretch when there were only scouts, and I patched myself over the relays back to Palaven. I wanted to say goodbye, say I was sorry for all the bad blood between us. Typical for him, when he found out what kind of situation I was in, he told me to just keep shooting. As long as I had one bullet left, I could still get the job done.

But I knew it wasn't true. It had been three days, and they still had troops to throw at me. I was out of food, nearly out of ammo, and I was slipping, I could feel it. Just a matter of time. I figured I'd take as many of the bastards with me as I could, maybe rig a grenade with a dead man switch so that they'd get a surprise when they came for my body, but that was it.

And then there you were. Alive. I didn't stop believing it was a hallucination until about a minute in, and by then I was just on autopilot. I still don't remember much after that, even discounting the rocket. 

I couldn't believe it was you, Cara said. And then I wondered why I hadn't figured it out earlier.

But the worst part of it, worse than the rocket, was coming to and immediately realizing that, one, I was in love with you, and two, that there was no way anything was ever going to come of it. Between you being Commander Shepard and the fact that you were still together with Liara, I never had a chance.

I wondered why you asked me if I'd found her.

Yeah. Surprised you didn't figure it out sooner, I'm bad at being subtle.

But here you are.

Here I am. Oh, and just to be sure, there's no chance that Liara is going to walk into the forward battery and flay me with her mind, is there?

What, does she scare you?

Lots of things scare me. Swimming, Reapers, missing an important shot. Even your hamster scares me. He always looks like he's planning something.

Odie? He's the most innocent thing aboard, next to Traynor.

I don't know, Shepard. The way he looks at me sometimes, it makes me worry.

She smiled and the strangeness of it almost overwhelmed her and in another moment her face had collapsed back to neutral. Garrus reached up and brought his hand into her view and then reached out—slow, careful—and brushed the edge of her lip, at the corner. Don't think I didn't see that, he said.  

**Author's Note:**

> Another piece that was originally going to be part of _and not to yield._. It's not a story as much as a couple scenes—ones I've had kicking around for at least a couple years.
> 
> I've never pictured Shepard as having lived a happy life. After the Reds, and all the years after, I don't imagine she's been close with anyone. In the playthrough I'm using as my reference, she had a relationship with Liara in ME1 and ME2, but a series of events in the early part of ME3 drove them apart. I might write more of that in other shorts.
> 
> Comments always appreciated.
> 
> Title, as with the others in this storyline, is from Tennyson's _Ulysses._


End file.
